This is usually how it goes down...

I get something new and one of the little boys takes it over before I can test it out. : )
Jack has claimed my new boots as his own and loves to show me the cool tricks he can do in them.

 

 

And now he has taken over the recliner that we just had delivered today. He's kindly informed I can still sit in Nora's room, just on a different chair. Thanks.

Last project of the week...?

Maybe...we'll see. I've already got the itch for a couple more things I've seen online.

We don't mind the chandelier in the dining room, but I've never liked the look of the exposed light bulbs.

So I've been on the lookout for mini lamp shades. The problem I've run into is either stores don't have enough, or online shops are too expensive. Especially since I wanted to be able to get plain ones to re-cover.
While we were at Menards the other day we lucked out and found plain ol' mini lampshades, cheap. Awesome. I already knew what fabric I wanted to use and since I'd re-covered the lamps in our room I pretty much knew what to do.

so after a quick refresher course in re-covering the shades I got to it this morning.

And I'm glad to be done! I'm very happy with how they look, and love how finished it makes the dining room. I was surprised at how much it changed the lighting in there, it's much softer now. Not bad, just not as bright. Now I need to get some more fabric and re-cover the chairs!

Andy's Baby shower

Last week the secretary from Andy's office called me and told me they wanted to throw Andy a surprise baby shower and wanted to make sure I'd be able to make it.
I warned her I'm not great at keeping secrets from him (I'm the one who convinces him to open presents early for birthdays and Christmas, because I can hardly stand to not blab to him what I got him!) but promised I'd do my best.
So yesterday when he told me that they were having a pizza lunch for someone in the office who was leaving I tried not to sound too eager to ask if I could come. Jack and I have joined them for office lunches before, so it wasn't out of the ordinary for me to tag along.

When I got there and we went back to the lunch room he was a little confused walking in, wondering why they were taking pictures of him. : ) He caught on, don't worry.
He was totally out of his element being the center of attention at a very pink baby shower, it was fun watching him!
We got lots of nice things for Nora, and Andy was pleased with how thoughtful his co-workers are.

All in all it was a nice time, one I'm sure he is not eager to try again though! : )

Also...we're on the 6 week count down to D-Day! Crazy!!

Smarty Pants

Avery is our little smarty pants, he takes after his dad and catches onto things very quickly and remembers everything! (Jack is also very smart, I'm not saying he's not. Avery just does more now that he's in school)
He's LOVING Kindergarten and his teacher is very impressed with how smart he is.
This week we spent a couple days in Columbia, MO. While the boys and I were hanging out in the motel while Andy was at a work conference Avery worked on writing his very own book.

When we came home we stapled it together and he finished writing the words to his book.

 

 

He asked me how to spell a couple words, but did the rest on his own. And don't worry. after he finished and showed it to me I did let him know the proper order to write on the page. He gets confused, but sometimes I think it's cute and funny to see where it makes sense to him to squeeze letters onto pages when he runs out of room.

I let him pick his favorite pages to include in this blog post. He's very proud of his book, and even took it to school today to show his teacher and friends. He's also started sounding words out everywhere we go, he's gotten pretty good and trying out the longer and harder words. It's fun for us to see him so excited about reading, writing and all other school related things!

Dreaming

This is what Jack spent most of the morning doing. He loves looking at that toy catalog. He likes to get nice and comfy and just pour through the pages. Every once in a while I'd hear "mommy! mommy! come here!" and get to be wowed by some fancy new fangled toy that neither of us know what it is or does...but it's head has spikey hair that resembles wolverine. 
Or excited shouts over an "awesome looking millennium falcon!"
He's very excited for Christmas. hopefully he likes the things we got him as much as he thinks he'd like all the toys from Toys R Us! :)

 

And, yes, he is still in his pajamas. He prefers to wear them as often as possible and pretty much only gets dressed when we have to go somewhere. He really likes "Comfy pants". That's my boy. : )

More baby stuff

Today I finished Nora's quilt. I'm pretty happy with it. I did it all by myself, which makes me feel pretty good!
I hand quilted most of it, then used the machine and "cheated" to sew the appliqued flowers and the binding. The tips of my fingers were too sore to do anymore hand sewing! I still like it though, and Andy assures me it will be better and stronger machine stitched so the binding doesn't get ripped off.
I had 2 thoughts when he mentioned this. First: He thinks I can't hand sew very well,lame. And second: He thinks our daughter is going to come out a baby body builder and just tear through stuff. The jury's still out on which I think he meant.

Anyway. It also matches the car seat that my cousin re-covered for me. I bought all the fabric at the same time, and I love it! She did an amazing job, and it's so much better than the boyish gray/red fabric that was on there as the original cover. She even make a bonus little elephant baby toy to match. Spoiled little Nora. :)

 

 AND with some of the scraps I also made a matching diaper/wipes case. I may have gone a bit overboard with this fabric. oh well. : )

She just better come out a she now and not have been hiding extra body parts during the ultrasound! Otherwise we'll have very girly boy stuff!

Things are starting to take shape

In approximately 7 weeks we're having a baby. YIKES!

And honestly we haven't even gone through all the baby stuff to see what we have and what we still need. I'm sure it'll be fine...there's always time tomorrow, right???
We've been lucky and my sisters have passed on lots of adorable baby clothes, so she should be one well dressed baby! My big project has been getting her "room" ready. I use the term room loosely because she actually gets the corner of a room. I'm not willing to give up my sewing room, and she doesn't need that much space anyway.

We did want to make it look cute, and not like we literally just shoved her in the corner, so I picked up some letters to hang her name on the wall, and mimicked the polka dots from her crib bedding and fancied it up a bit. I'm happy with it, and now you can tell we really DO care where she sleeps. : )

Most of the "big" projects are done, I suppose sorting through all the baby stuff is kind of big...but I'll make Andy help me one weekend. We're excited, and nervous and little stressed that D-day seems to be coming quicker than we thought! Wish us luck!!! : )

This is true love...

I don't know if we've blogged about Andy's star wars room or not...but basically he is allowed free reign of the basement to decorate with his star wars "collectibles" (no, they're not toys!). Here's his movie poster wall -

Anyway, after I made the pillows for our bedroom he decided that the purple girly pillows we had in the basement needed an update - so here they are, all star wars-ed (??) out. I must love him. He and the boys are very happy with their new custom pillows though, so that makes me happy. And any time I get to use the cricut also makes me happy! : )

Pillows!

A couple months ago we started re-decorating our bedroom. Pretty much everything was finished but I knew I wanted more pillows on the bed. About a month ago we scored an awesome deal on decorative pillows (some were fairly ugly) at Sears, 1.99 each! Awesome!

I've had other things to work on so I just got around to making the pillow cases this week, and we love them! (LOVE!) I think they turned out way better than I imagined. Sometimes I see something a certain way in my head but it doesn't exactly translate well when I make it. So I'm very pleased with these.

We've got pleats, ruffles, stripes, rosettes, pretty colors. Love them, and they make the bed look so luxurious. (We think so anyway) Thank you, internet for all the inspiration.

He wears no pants

Since potty training Jack he seems to have discovered how comfy it is for him to not wear pants. he pretty much wears pants when we go places or when I make him when people come over. This picture is from this morning, after we took Avery to school and went to walmart. He just didn't want to put pants back on after using the bathroom when we got home.
Sometimes he will find the closest pair of pajama pants and at least wear those, but he doesn't voluntarily put jeans back on. He makes us laugh. Good thing it's okay for a 3 year old to run around the house in his undies. Right?

November 1st - 77 degrees!?

Way to start November! We celebrated this Indian Summer day by taking a walk in shorts and t-shirts. Batman even came with us! Sad that tomorrow is actually supposed to feel like November for real!

Trick-or-Treat!

This year we took the boys trick-or-treating for the first time. We usually just do the ward trunk-or-treat, or in Utah we took them to the mall where they passed out candy from all the stores. But since we live in an actual neighborhood we decided to go for it. So my sister and her family came and we had a yummy Halloween dinner and then left the teenagers to pass out candy so the parents and littles could go door to door. For dinner I made some "mummy dogs", "rotten apple punch", and then we have some artisan bread topped with all sorts of yumminess. I wish we had leftovers. : )

I don't think Avery and Jack quite understood what we meant when we told them we were going trick-or-treating, it didn't take long for them to figure it out. After the first house Jack came running back to me shouting that he got candy, then asked if we were going home now. I told him no, we're going to more houses to get candy. His response was an excited squeal and an exclamation of "there are more houses!?" Avery loved running around collecting candy with Rebekah, and Bella was awesome for taking the kids to the doors as we parents stood back and watched.

 

I think my favorite part of the whole experience was Jack running in his gnome costume. He kind of has a skip/hop/jaunty run, which was absolutely perfect for his costume, he was the cutest frolicking gnome out there! It was hilarious and I couldn't stop laughing every time he ran. Which was quite often since he was so excited he could barely stand to just walk. You could also hear Jack yelling "Trick-or-treat!" very loudly at each door, and about 2 second after the rest of the kids! Avery and Rebekah proudly came skipping back to us after each house exclaiming "We said thank you!". Every. house. : )

 

 The boys were so excited to be out showing off their costumes and trick-or-treating, I loved every minute of it. They also got quite the load of candy, so I think we'll be stashing some of it for stockings come Christmas!

I loved Halloween this year more than the last few I think, the boys were so excited about it and I love their costumes. Kids make just about everything more fun...especially when they're cute! : )

Halloween Carnival

Last year we went to the Polo Halloween Carnival with Sarah and Kevin's family and had a blast. So we decided to hit it up again this year, and it did not disappoint! The boys had a blast playing all the games, we loved getting to dress them up one more time and they got to pick some fun prizes to bring home at the end of the night. And they think everything is even more fun when we get to do it with cousins!

 The lines got kind of long for some of the games, but really it wasn't bad. Jack did see a nasty werewolf costume half way through our time there that sort of ruined his night. Luckily the bounce house helped ease the fright he was feeling.

I love how excited the boys get about almost everything, it makes it so exciting for me too! And they looked too cute in their costumes not to take every opportunity to dress them up!!